By Matthew Scott Hunter
SPIDER-MAN 3 (T)
**1/2
Activision
Xbox 360
On the silver screen, Spidey may be dealing with his inner darkness for the first time, but those of us who’ve played Activision’s last three “Spider-Man” video games have dealt with the webslinger’s dark side before. That dark side consists of lackluster melee combat and a stubbornly disorienting camera, and these blemishes have clung to the series like a sticky alien symbiote that just won’t let go.
Like its predecessor, this title lets you spin your web in an open-ended New York City, and utilizing the powerful next-gen hardware, the city limits extend further than ever. Soaring between skyscrapers still offers the best thrills in the game, but sooner or later you have to accept that whole “with great power comes great responsibility” thing, which means less recreational webslinging and more repetitive, button-mashing battles. And even though you no longer have to thwart countless armored car robberies just to reach the story missions, you’ll find plenty of generic bad guys to wear out your thumbs and your patience in the story missions themselves.
COMMAND & CONQUER 3: TIBERIUM WARS (T)
****
Electronic Arts
Xbox 360
Few developers have managed to make real-time strategy games work on a console sans mouse and keyboard, but EA pulled it off with “Battle for Middle-Earth II.” That same system gets the cheese-ball sci-fi treatment in “Tiberium Wars.” You can tinker with every aspect of your futuristic army and then kick back and enjoy HD video sequences starring familiar faces from “Star Wars,” “Starship Troopers,” and even TV’s “Lost.” It’s like a geek dream come true.
INNOCENT LIFE: A FUTURISTIC HARVEST MOON (E)
**1/2
Marvelous Interactive/Rising Star Games
PlayStation Portable
The title’s fairly self-explanatory, but it still took me a while to accept that someone actually created “Harvest Moon: The Next Generation.” But for all of its futuristic window dressing, this farming sim hasn’t changed much. Your robotic avatar will still plant crops, raise livestock and endure the whole rural experience. Apparently, in the future, mankind still won’t have an explanation for the appeal of the “Harvest Moon” series.
TH3 PLAN (T)
*1/2
Ghostlight/Monte Cristo
PlayStation 2
Oh, that’s not a typo -- there is, in fact, a three in the title. See, in “Th3 Plan,” there are three members in your little band of thieves, and somewhere during the development of this game, the programmers must have decided it would be cool to incorporate that number into the title. Alas, there’s no “E” in “Plan.” So they stuck the number in the word “the” instead, which is a perfect example of how ill-conceived this game is. Despite the game’s various heists, there’s really only one impressive robbery, and that’s the one you’ll fall victim to if you buy this game.
When Las Vegas Weekly contributor Matthew Scott Hunter realized his career as a lab technician was seriously interfering with his gaming, he pink-slipped himself into a successful career as a freelance writer. Bug the hell out of him at [email protected]